![]() It’s weird and it probably isn’t for everyone but I recommend giving Calvino a go. Okay, final thoughts: I loved this book and I’d recommend it wholeheartedly. I think these quotes give you a sense of Calvino’s style and the ideas he explores within the book. The earth has forgotten her.įutures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches. I added some quotes from Invisible Cities to my commonplace book and I realise that they make zero sense out of context (and possible even within the context of the book because that’s just Calvino’s style) but I wanted to share two short ones here:īut in vain I set out to visit the city: forced to remain motionless and always the same, in order to be more easily remembered, Zora has languished, disintegrated, disappeared. I think it’s a beautiful work of literature and I found it fascinating. ![]() It’s all very surreal but also carefully constructed. You can definitely read this without delving into the writing of Marco Polo though so don’t worry about that!īoth the writing style and the form of the book can be a little bit odd at times but, for me, that adds to the dream-like, whimsical nature of the book. He’s just drawing inspiration and building upon an already fascinating text. Calvino isn’t attempting to mimic the original and he isn’t trying to mock or deride it either. I love Calvino’s response to the original text and I think it’s a beautiful reimagining of Marco Polo’s work in Calvino’s distinct style. Calvino indulges in metafiction in such a beautiful, creative way in this novel.Ĭalvino is deliberately deconstructing the travelogue, a form of travel literature which is like a travel diary, and Invisible Cities draws up The Travels of Marco Polo, the travelogue that Marco Polo wrote in the thirteenth century. Every so often, the city descriptions are broken up by dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan and the frame narrative helps create a sense of continuity within the and it emphasises Marco Polo’s storytelling. He’s describing various (fictitious) cities to Kublai Khan and many of the tales can be read meditations on human nature, culture, language, and death. The book is set out as a series of tales or short stories told by Marco Polo. A quick note about the translator: William Weaver was a well-known English language translator of modern Italian literature and he translated several works by Calvino, Umberto Eco, and Primo Levi. I adored reading this because Calvino has this ability to transport me into whatever world he has created and it was such an immersive reading experience for me. Italo Calvino’s books are always weird and wonderful and Invisible Cities was no different. ![]() It is an innovative story that has been profoundly influential in literary, architectural and many other creative fields, and consequently Invisible Cities is considered a remarkable and masterful book.Summary: As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which “has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be,” the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvellous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take Invisible Cities gives way to a collection of bizarre, beautiful, horrible and terrifying cities - although at times strangely familiar and other times terrifically impossible. These various encounters, the constructions of imagined cities, are filled with persuasive imagery, rich in architectural form and offer suggestive in cultural and social metaphors as a comment on the nature of our perceptions and rituals. ![]() Unbeknown to Khan, Polo is describing, over and over again, the myriad of invented forms of Venice - the very city they both dwell in. Italo Calvino uses sublime prose to evoke the extraordinary and yet illusory endeavours of a young Marco Polo, who describes to the Kublai Khan, the exotic and global encounters he pretends to have witnessed. Victoria writes: Invisible Cities is a brilliant novel about the dominance of imagination, the lust of desire, the power of the Other and the evocative nature of 'story'. ![]()
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